I have to admit, using my GPS “App” on my iPhone is about the best thing that has happened to me as I travel. Putting this app to the test in some pretty confusing driving situations, the system has yet to fail me. Ever wished that leading your company’s future was as sure as following a GPS system?
Vision should be one of the highest priorities of any contractor or construction leader. Yet, when it comes to creating a vision for a company, many contractors make only a faint effort, and those who do often wear out from trying to implement the spirit of the vision. Why is this?
One perspective that you may want to consider begins with how you actually view vision. Consider the difference between the purpose of a compass compared to the results of a specific road map, such as a GPS-based system. There is a huge difference.
While many contractors would love to have a crystal ball of what the future might hold, this will never happen. Yet, it is important that a contractor have some sense of where the company needs to go. Personally, I believe strongly that creating a vision for your company is more like reading a compass than a road map.
Consider the purpose of a compass: It is to provide you with an overall view of the general direction. You may knock about a bit to the East or to the West, but the compass will keep you within some compliance boundaries, not allowing you to stray too far one way or the other. Isn’t the impact made by setting a vision for your company similar?
It is during the fall season that contractors should be considering the vision for their organization. It’s time to recalibrate, reviewing how the previous six to nine months have gone, and to set the new course for the following year. The setting of the “scope” of direction is most often called the vision for the company.
Setting the vision must originate with the contractor. It’s not some fancy statement that describes how much in revenue the company will do the next year or even the percentage of profits that will be made. These are more like goals than a vision.
A vision is what is felt, desired, even forecast by the owner as to what he or she sees as worth striving to achieve in the next year. Without any clear action steps yet known, the vision is established to serve as the guiding light, the “holy grail” if you will, of where we want to go in our growth and leadership of the company — thus, the comparison of a vision to the proposed use of a compass.
The compass sets the overriding direction of the journey without defining the step-by-step efforts to achieve the journey’s end. That comes next in the order of setting direction.
Consider the benefits of creating and sharing a vision for your organization:
- You and your leaders now have some common direction to lead toward
- Workers are more confident, realizing that the company is indeed headed in a known direction
- Vision gives purpose and priority to “what we do and why”
- Vision helps to define the type of contractor we want to be and how we will go about impacting our market
- Customers also benefit from a contractor with vision as they enjoy working with a mature contractor who is purposeful in his efforts, not prone to just take work as it comes along
If you do not have a vision for your company consider developing one this year. If you already have a vision for your company, review it, write it down and share it with your employees. In either situation, be sure to write your vision down on paper so that others can also capture some of the spirit that you feel.
Consider just a few brief examples of vision statements that I’ve collected over the years by contractors:
- We will become the “first choice” among concrete contractors in our market area.
- Our vision is to be recognized as a quality provider of services that exceeds our customer’s expectations.
- We are committed to being the “preferred contractor” of choice!
- Simply the Best of Class!
You can tell that the sample statements are simple in wording. I think this is wise as a vision should be easily discussed and presented so that others get a very clear understanding as to where you are coming from and where you are going.
However, notice that there are no specifics about how your business will achieve the vision. That’s where “GPS” comes in to play. After you have clearly set out your vision, it is then time to develop a clear path of how you are going to achieve your vision.
This phase of the strategic process includes you building a business or strategic plan. Such plans offer specific actions, goals and steps that will be executed in hopes of addressing the right efforts to grow your business.
We’ll come back to the development of your company’s “road map” in a future article but let’s briefly review our vision discussion.
- A vision is more like a compass, setting the overall direction without committing to only one pathway.
- A vision really needs to come from the owner or the senior leaders responsible for leading the company to the future.
- Vision is needed to help set the future course and for empowering your workers to “catch the vision” and begin to see purpose and priority in their daily efforts.
- Vision is what you use to keep your company direction honest and on-line with future developments.
Can a contractor change his vision during the course of the year? Good question. While I can’t say that a change in vision is impossible to do, I would say that more often a contractor will change some of his strategies while maintaining the same vision. Economic situations can and have altered many contractor’s approach to winning more work and growing a business. But, while we may have altered our bidding process to be more competitive in the marketplace these past few years, most contractors would admit that their vision of being a quality driven contractor remains solidly in place.
Take another look at your vision. What is your vision for this year? Have you moved your vision from your heart and mind to paper yet? If not, commit to doing so this fall and begin to cast your vision to your company workers. Give them the opportunity to begin setting some of the tactics and action steps — the GPS road map — that will help you reach your vision.
Vision should come from deep within you as a contractor. It is what defines you and your approach to construction. It is living proof of the entrepreneurial spirit within contractors. Remember, this is your vision and you are the builder of your company…it was not built for you by the government or anyone else!
Cast your contractor’s “compass”…Vision!
